Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Nurglitch wrote:Yes, I was banned from Warseer when I noticed a large number of forum infractions that I alerted the moderators to being dismissed. When I consulted the Helpdesk to ask how I could distinguish posts that broke the rules from those that merely seemed to, I was banned for trolling, flaming, and not following forum rules.

That is because you followed Warseers RAW instead of RAI.

Cogito wrote:The problem with the example concerning passing within 1 inch of an enemy model you are not assaulting resolves around the fact that the base size is 25mm and 1 inch is 25.4mm.

I don't know how long you've been in "the GW hobby" (tm), but if you were in when 40k3 was released, GW redefined measurement to use GW Inches, with their provided measurement sticks such that the GW Inch was exactly 25.00 mm, which, coincidentally is the minimum size of their base.

And even so, it relies on the notion that the Necron Lord is not part of / has not joined the Warrior unit, which is the next leg of the argument to review.

And finally, there's the detailed analysis of the Assault Move rules to be done...

Let's face it - it would be cheesy to say your opponent cannot assault a squad because you put another right behind them. If someone is going to be a stickler about it the best thing to do is shoot up the enemy unit in the back to open up some 'holes' in their magic line.

- G

The exploded sentences that have undergone semantically valid decomposition and whose decompositions still disagree means that there is genuine vagueness to the expression of the rule.

Ouchie-you just sprained my brain!

Other things being equal, I would be a RAW advocate. What stops me from being such is the plethora of incorrect vocabulary, spellings, syntax and grammar in the rules. Writing clear rules free of ambiguity is possible, but not possible in the absence of extensive, rigorous playtesting. Even with excellent rules, there is a simple system of updating the rules corpus: errata and amendment sheets printed and distributed with the newly printed books. These sheets are then replaced in subsequent printings of the rules (hence version 4.1, 4.2, etc.). The process of creating the rules is facilitated by clearly separating fluff from rule, something that is not done in 40K. All the above discussion simply ilustrates the enormous amount of effort directed at trying to establish the rules, effort that would be more satisfyingly directed at playing the game if GW would do its job correctly.

yakface wrote:
Regardless of your feelings about other forums, please refrain from any further 'forum bashing' here on Dakka.

The only thing such attacks can do is to splinter the gaming community and promote unneeded hostility, neither of which are useful to anyone.

Because there has never been any animosity between forums, or gaming groups and we all get together and sing "koombayah" before we scream "Waagh" and push all of our miniatures into one huge close assault in the middle of the table....

amirite?

Or we can tell you what we really think!



- G

Blackmoor: I'd say it was because I wasn't willing to play the RAW game or the RAI game and wanted better for Warseer. But I don't think that's on topic, or politic considering the comments from the local moderation.

JCarter: Yes, my proposal is that by employing a semantically valid method of rules interpretation we can find an objective interpretation for the 40k rules, and an effective method of correcting deficiencies in those rules. In particular I'm more concerned with the text of the rules working to convey the rules rather than whether those rules work in the game. There are reasons I won't go into why play-testing is irrelevant to a game besides a marketing tool, but for the purposes of this thread it is important to remember the distinction between what the text states and what the text should state (those of us with MAs in philosophy may call this the distinction between the descriptive and the normative).

In short this thread is about getting away from the deficiencies of RAW and RAI in order to get on with explaining and motivating an effective method of reading text about rules, and in particular text with the degree of vagueness that the 4th edition of 40k have.

Anyhow, in my next post I'll be laying out the method and I'd appreciate it if people proposed unproblematic parts of the text they'd like to see used in the demonstration. The point of this demonstration will be to show how a semantically valid method of interpreting the rules works in standard cases before moving onto problem cases.

Nurglitch: I'm intrigued by the phrasing "the text of the rules working to convey the rules." which phrasing implies that you see the rules as independent of and prior to the text of the rules as opposed to the text being the rules, or am I misinterpreting your Ordnunganschauung?

Blackheart666 wrote:

yakface wrote:
Regardless of your feelings about other forums, please refrain from any further 'forum bashing' here on Dakka.

The only thing such attacks can do is to splinter the gaming community and promote unneeded hostility, neither of which are useful to anyone.

Because there has never been any animosity between forums, or gaming groups and we all get together and sing "koombayah" before we scream "Waagh" and push all of our miniatures into one huge close assault in the middle of the table....

amirite?

Sarcasm aside, there is animosity between some gaming groups, but we're not condoning it here. We have no illusion that it'll fix everything, but we're doing our part to prevent such things. We don't want people hating Dakka or feeling unwelcome because of any forum bashing that goes on here. Yakface wants to change Dakka in certain ways, and one of them is promoting healthy discussion and debate (especially debate; we like being known as a place to get good gaming advice) without getting nasty, which keeps people away.

If you do have any questions about this, please feel free to PM any of the Mods about it.

I have found that Dakka has become much more friendly over the past year. It's nice.



- G

JCarter: Something like that. The rules are expressed by the text. That means there's a little bit of amphiboly when we say "rules". We could mean the text that the rules are expressed in, or we could mean the rules expressed by the text. In addition the text isn't the only thing expressing the rules, there's also the layout, the diagrams, headings, and so on.

I wouldn't say that the rules are prior to the text, like there's these platonic Warhammer rules floating out there somewhere, but they are indicated by the text (where the text is indicative).

I think the fatal flaw in your (otherwise excellent) plan Nurglitch is the problem of analyzing the synthetic as opposed to the natural. You are of course correct that there is a set of rules, which is expressed in words and text, and then we process that text to get our rules. And you are quite correct that there can be disconnects in that process if not done correctly.

However, the issue is that the rules themselves are not internally consistant. If there appears to be a contradiction, in dealing with reality we can assume we made a mistake in our premises. However, in the case of a man made system of rules, it may just be that they are not consistant, and even when perfectly written and understood are mutually exclusive.

A big part of the trouble, beyond logic and sentance construction, is that the rules are not constructed and tested with the same rigour as say a computer program. Sometimes problems do not crop up until the 6000th game played by the rules, by which time it is already out the door. Most humans are not capable of thinking of so many abstract rules and situations at once, and so it never occures to them that there is a problem. And since humans are playing it, we naturally "fix" things that don't make sense one way or the other without realizing there is a problem. Then you get on a forum, ask "What do you think?" and realize there are a few different answers that make pretty good sense.

So, while I agree that everyone needs a good solid understanding of grammar and logic (dear god do they), I would say a good bit more could stand to be had by those who would write rules. As anyone who studies government quickly finds, neither RAI nor RAW often can produce Results As Intended.

Wehrkind: The fatal flaw you identify with my plan does not exist. I addressed the issue of inconsistency earlier in the thread. Basically by analyzing the rules in a semantically valid fashion we will be able to identify just what contradictions exist in the rules. Indeed part of analyzing natural languages via formal semantics is precisely to take stock of what fuzziness and inconsistency exists in the structure expressed. By identifying what the consistent and inconsistent parts of the rule structure are, we establish a basis for how we should make the inconsistent consistent. As has been pointed out by biologists, cognitive scientists, and engineers in general, one does not need a designer's intentions in order to retro-engineer a system. One does, however, need a rigorous method of analysis; fortunately one is available.

My point though is that the "rules" do not exist as such outside of their creator's conception of them. So while we can find places where there are contradictions in the rules, where we go from there and how we correct those contradictions is still an open question.
Take any number of the heated debates in this forum. Many start to rely on "Well, this makes sense." But how do we know if it does or not? Can a Marine out box an Ork? A lot depends on our imaginations of how it works, largely independant of how it could possibly work in reality.

In other words, when we come to places where there are gaps and inconsistancies, we can not "discover" what makes the system work. Rather we have to create something to fill that gap. That still brings us to the point of discussing with our friends what the solution should be, with the possibility of many and varied solutions that may or may not work, but with very little method of testing it.

In still other words, if the designers of the game were unable to conceptualize a fully functional, internally consistant set of rules, no amount of clever and careful wording is going to make it internally consistant, and as such no amount of analysis on our part, no matter how excellent, is going to produce internal consistancy from the written words. We can find the gaps, but then what? We write our own rules, based on what we believe is RAI, or what is "realistic", or what is convenient. The trouble is demonstrating to someone else that those are more logically consistant and improve game play over their created rule.

Wehrkind: Sure, but your point is false. The existence of rules does not depend on anyone's conception of them. The rules of logic, for example, are beyond the conception of their creators, that's what makes logic and mathematics productive: that we have yet to explore all of the properties of whichever structures we care to study. Indeed the institution of formal computer science was driven by the awareness that the formal structures of partially computable functions lay beyond the grasp of their creators and hence their creators needed to discovered what they did as well as posit them a priori.

Rules are what is expressed by the text of rulebooks. Where we find contradictions within the scope of a particular structure we have plenty to go on to correct that contradiction should we find such a contradiction incorrect. Para-consistent logics, for example, don't bother to correct contradictions and some merely track them for a certain value of consistency in inferences. Indeed by analyzing the text and removing the noise information we have an abundant wealth of information about what structures are used and when.

It's quite simply. You find a pattern and where there is a gap in that pattern you can fill it in by cutting and pasting an identical unbroken part of the pattern to fill the gap.

Part of my proposal is that while jerry-rigging for the sake of moving a game along is alright, it's also a waste of time and effort in the long run. The tools are available for us to filter the noise from the text of the rules and to mechanically 'fix' any deficiencies that we find in the filtered pattern. Again, this is not a normative project of deciding what the rules should be, but discovering what they are.

Demonstrating logical consistency is a simple matter, unless the person you are demonstrating it to does not understand valid methods of proof. Whether game play is improved goes beyond the scope of my proposal, for while it is true that game play may be improved were the rules other than they are, it is false that rules can be other than what they are.

I understand you objection, but the fact is that it misses the point of engaging in a descriptive project according to effective methods of formal semantics, rather than in the semantically invalid methods of RAI and RAW. My point is that the problem you raise doesn't exist and the solution you propose to this non-existent problem is semantically invalid; RAI does not preserve truth because (a) rules don't work like you apparently think they do, they have no 'existence' they are merely expressed. And (b) what the designers intended the text should express is different from what the text does express (commonly known as the 'is-ought' distinction and going back to David Hume...).

Nurglitch wrote:Wehrkind: Sure, but your point is false. The existence of rules does not depend on anyone's conception of them. The rules of logic, for example, are beyond the conception of their creators, that's what makes logic and mathematics productive: that we have yet to explore all of the properties of whichever structures we care to study. Indeed the institution of formal computer science was driven by the awareness that the formal structures of partially computable functions lay beyond the grasp of their creators and hence their creators needed to discovered what they did as well as posit them a priori.

Rules are what is expressed by the text of rulebooks. Where we find contradictions within the scope of a particular structure we have plenty to go on to correct that contradiction should we find such a contradiction incorrect. Para-consistent logics, for example, don't bother to correct contradictions and some merely track them for a certain value of consistency in inferences. Indeed by analyzing the text and removing the noise information we have an abundant wealth of information about what structures are used and when.

It's quite simply. You find a pattern and where there is a gap in that pattern you can fill it in by cutting and pasting an identical unbroken part of the pattern to fill the gap.

Part of my proposal is that while jerry-rigging for the sake of moving a game along is alright, it's also a waste of time and effort in the long run. The tools are available for us to filter the noise from the text of the rules and to mechanically 'fix' any deficiencies that we find in the filtered pattern. Again, this is not a normative project of deciding what the rules should be, but discovering what they are.

Demonstrating logical consistency is a simple matter, unless the person you are demonstrating it to does not understand valid methods of proof. Whether game play is improved goes beyond the scope of my proposal, for while it is true that game play may be improved were the rules other than they are, it is false that rules can be other than what they are.

I understand you objection, but the fact is that it misses the point of engaging in a descriptive project according to effective methods of formal semantics, rather than in the semantically invalid methods of RAI and RAW. My point is that the problem you raise doesn't exist and the solution you propose to this non-existent problem is semantically invalid; RAI does not preserve truth because (a) rules don't work like you apparently think they do, they have no 'existence' they are merely expressed. And (b) what the designers intended the text should express is different from what the text does express (commonly known as the 'is-ought' distinction and going back to David Hume...).

The fundamental flaw to this is no matter how much you dress up your answer in logic and semantics etc if someone doesn't agree with your answer all you have done is produce more noise until the person who wrote the rules offers their legal opinion. Many arguments cannot agree on a key word that often leads the logic tree in a different direction. The differences in local idiom (or even gaming idiom) can also complicate things. Your intrepretation (or even a group effort) is no more valid than any one elses who can supply a valid sense of reasoning behind their thoughts.

A prime example is the Adepticon FAQ - a good effort and I like many of their answers and rulings but outside of that competition it is worthless. Sure it can be used as support but if you don't accept its authority to begin with it is worthless. What makes you think anything you will produce will have any authority on how people decide to play or intepret a rule. Human nature means that people will seek evidence that supports ideas and dismiss evidence that doesn't. Your (or the group) analysis will fall into that category. Pointless because it carries absolutely no authority. Heck, you could be some 12 year old who has found his older brothers college text and likes big words. Why would I give anything you say any more weight that say Ghaz? Ghaz has some great thoughts on rules but at times I could bang my head against the table at what I perceive to be his illogical thought processes and intransigence.

Take the example of CSM pistol/ rapid fire combo. To some the word "carrying" is the key. To others the final part of the sentence shows why it only applies to rapid fire weapons and not pistols. To others that final sentence is just fluff. To others it is pretty obvious that if you fire a pistol the pistol rules apply. People tend to be fairly entrenched in their opionions and don't tend to move from them. You can produce a reem of logical analysis but if someone is never going to agree with your final sentence that starts with "and therefore A can do action B" it is pointless.

Another example is does an SM carrying a heavy weapon still have his bolter. No matter how much you analyse that unless your analysis ends witht he sentence "and therefore an SM carrying a HW does not have his bolter" I am going to disagree with you. It will take nothing short of a official FAQ to change my mind. That is why I think this process you are advocate maybe a great exercise in logic and semantics but overall just pointless. Like many others, I find this forum useful for giving me different ways of looking at things and then looking at the rules again anf forming my own opinion - two or three people I give more weight than others. Sometimes I will use logically approaches from other codices and sometimes I won't because it produces an insolvable inconsitancy.

My final thought, is that different types of gamers have a different approach to rules. For example, I am more of a board gamer, so for me it will be a mostly RAW approach. However, if I disagree with the RAW I will allow an opponent to use a rule that seems fairer and more in keeping with the game even if it seems to be against the rules or logic. At the end of the day, what are you going to do in a game setting if a rules dispute arises if two people have diametrically opposed ideas? A long discussion on logical analysis? The reality for many people is either a) one person acquiesces as it just isn't worth it or b) d6 it. I have also listened to the loud fighting arguments and accusations of cheating and even a metal miniature hurled at a wall in a temper tantrum because one person will not accept another person obviously superior logic.

Anyway, to breakdown my post to its main point, this process is pointless as it carries no authority in gaming terms and will be used by those who agree with it and dismissed by those who don’t. Similar to the Yakfaq basically – I take from it bits I agree with only and use it as an alternative way of phrasing what I want I am trying to achieve.

fullheadofhair: You would be correct if this project was about telling people how they had to play the game. But that's not the project. The project is about what rules the text of the rulebook expresses. Two rather different things, as players choose to apply rules or not, but they cannot change what information exists in the rulebook.

Analyzing the rules with a degree of logical rigour will not force anyone to read the rules that way. They can always get it wrong, either by mistake or willfully. The fact is that when done rigorously and in a semantically valid fashion this analysis of the rules will be 'more valid' than anyone's subjective opinion. That's the point of applying formal semantics here, to get the correct or 'most valid' interpretation. In a sense what we would be doing would not even be interpretation like that of one natural language into another, but more like laying out the blue-prints of the rules from which the text has been built.

But it appears that I need to disabuse you of the notion that any 'valid sense of reasoning'. In logic there are two senses of validity, syntactic validity and semantic validity. If something is semantically valid, then the truth of all derivations within it will be preserved. If something is syntactically valid, then the structure of all derivations within it will be fixed to each other and the larger structure.

Part of formal logic is being able to take any proposition or structure and mechanically check whether it carries the same truth-value as another proposition or it is congruent with that structure. If you think some piece of reasoning is illogical then a toolbox exists full of tools that allow one to prove whether that is the case or otherwise. There is no fallacy of the appeal to authority, as the universality and applicability of these tools has been proven and can be proven should you care to check. In that sense the authority of these methods is the same authority that certifies that 2 + 2 = 4 for a particular set of values and operations.

Let's address the example of a Chaos Space Marine equipped with a pistol and a rapid fire weapon. Before we can assert that any term in the expression of the relevant rules qua text is significant we first need to analyze that text into its component parts. We need to know what words signify what terms, whether any terms have been grammatically occluded, what syntactic structure those rules have, and what semantic model provides the truth-values of whatever structures that text expresses.

Doing so removes any reasonable disagreement about what terms like 'carrying' may mean because each of these four properties of the text are objective facts that anyone with a basic knowledge of grammar and logic can deduce in deductively valid manner. Here it might be something to point out the difference between a deductively valid argument and a deductively invalid but inductively strong argument.

In a deductively valid argument the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. There are no loose ends, as it were, and thus statements can be proved with deductive validity. In a deductively invalid argument the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. That does not mean the conclusion must be false, just that the premises are not necessarily connected to the conclusion. The conclusion of a deductively invalid argument can turn out to be true when the premises are true, whether by luck, or by simply being deductively incomplete. In the case of being deductively incomplete the premises constitute evidence towards the truth of the conclusion, and hence evidence is always incomplete proof for any conclusion.

But when we have all the information available, such as when we have not only the text of a rule, but the complete text of a system of rules, we can assert things about those rules with the certitude of deductive validity. We can say things that are inarguably true about such a system of rules, and anyone disagreeing with the truth of such statements can either check the work to satisfy themselves of its technical rigour (and perhaps prove their disagreement warranted), or they can flag themselves as unwilling to admit the truth or engage in reasonable discussion.

To reiterate my point: This method carries the 'authority' of all mathematical methods, that of objectivity. No one need admit the truth, obviously, just like no-one need admit 2 + 2 = 4 (given the natural numbers, etc). But the truth is available for when they need it, such as when they need to do sum or whatever else requires the capacity to reason objectively and mathematically in real life.

fullheadofhair wrote:Take the example of CSM pistol/ rapid fire combo.

Another example is does an SM carrying a heavy weapon still have his bolter.

IMO, when we talk about RAW & RAI, it's important to only focus on the new-style Codices (C:Eldar at the earliest, though I like to look at C:CSM as when the new-style Codices are "settled"). The rules and analysis approach doesn't hold well with the older books (e.g. Necrons, C:SM) because they weren't designed to work that way. For example, Necrons in general and WBB in particular are a total disaster from a rules perspective.

For the CSM example, it's important to look at the *all* of the rules within context. If you are focusing on the Weapon section, why are you presuming it to override the text in the Assault section when the context in question is Assault? I would think it makes far more sense to look at the rules under Assault first, and then Weapons as correlating.

BBB, Assaults, p.36 wrote:An infantry unit that fired twice with pistols or which shot with rapid fire weapons or remained stationary to fire heavy weapons may not charge at all in the Assault phase.

So the presence of a RF weapon is meaningless, only whether they fired with them. If the player declares that he moved and fired once with the Pistol, and did NOT fire with any RF weapons, then he can charge. The restriction on Assault only applies if any of the 3 conditions were met, and none were: didn't double-tap with pistol, didn't shoot with RF weapon, didn't remain stationary. Therefore, RAW says the CSM can move, fire pistol, and assault even if they carry RF weapons.

In the SM example, this is because it is an old Codex. One may presume that C:SM will be updated to follow the rules patterns in C:CSM and CA, so the future wording will be "models may replace their Bolter with...", rather than the 40k3 presumption that models may not be armed with multiple 2-handed weapons.

I anticipate 5th Edition will be a great help in addressing these stupid little nits.

Nurglitch wrote:fullheadofhair: You would be correct if this project was about telling people how they had to play the game. But that's not the project. The project is about what rules the text of the rulebook expresses. Two rather different things, as players choose to apply rules or not, but they cannot change what information exists in the rulebook.

Analyzing the rules with a degree of logical rigour will not force anyone to read the rules that way. They can always get it wrong, either by mistake or willfully. The fact is that when done rigorously and in a semantically valid fashion this analysis of the rules will be 'more valid' than anyone's subjective opinion. That's the point of applying formal semantics here, to get the correct or 'most valid' interpretation. In a sense what we would be doing would not even be interpretation like that of one natural language into another, but more like laying out the blue-prints of the rules from which the text has been built.

But it appears that I need to disabuse you of the notion that any 'valid sense of reasoning'. In logic there are two senses of validity, syntactic validity and semantic validity. If something is semantically valid, then the truth of all derivations within it will be preserved. If something is syntactically valid, then the structure of all derivations within it will be fixed to each other and the larger structure.

Part of formal logic is being able to take any proposition or structure and mechanically check whether it carries the same truth-value as another proposition or it is congruent with that structure. If you think some piece of reasoning is illogical then a toolbox exists full of tools that allow one to prove whether that is the case or otherwise. There is no fallacy of the appeal to authority, as the universality and applicability of these tools has been proven and can be proven should you care to check. In that sense the authority of these methods is the same authority that certifies that 2 + 2 = 4 for a particular set of values and operations.

Let's address the example of a Chaos Space Marine equipped with a pistol and a rapid fire weapon. Before we can assert that any term in the expression of the relevant rules qua text is significant we first need to analyze that text into its component parts. We need to know what words signify what terms, whether any terms have been grammatically occluded, what syntactic structure those rules have, and what semantic model provides the truth-values of whatever structures that text expresses.

Doing so removes any reasonable disagreement about what terms like 'carrying' may mean because each of these four properties of the text are objective facts that anyone with a basic knowledge of grammar and logic can deduce in deductively valid manner. Here it might be something to point out the difference between a deductively valid argument and a deductively invalid but inductively strong argument.

In a deductively valid argument the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. There are no loose ends, as it were, and thus statements can be proved with deductive validity. In a deductively invalid argument the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. That does not mean the conclusion must be false, just that the premises are not necessarily connected to the conclusion. The conclusion of a deductively invalid argument can turn out to be true when the premises are true, whether by luck, or by simply being deductively incomplete. In the case of being deductively incomplete the premises constitute evidence towards the truth of the conclusion, and hence evidence is always incomplete proof for any conclusion.

But when we have all the information available, such as when we have not only the text of a rule, but the complete text of a system of rules, we can assert things about those rules with the certitude of deductive validity. We can say things that are inarguably true about such a system of rules, and anyone disagreeing with the truth of such statements can either check the work to satisfy themselves of its technical rigour (and perhaps prove their disagreement warranted), or they can flag themselves as unwilling to admit the truth or engage in reasonable discussion.

To reiterate my point: This method carries the 'authority' of all mathematical methods, that of objectivity. No one need admit the truth, obviously, just like no-one need admit 2 + 2 = 4 (given the natural numbers, etc). But the truth is available for when they need it, such as when they need to do sum or whatever else requires the capacity to reason objectively and mathematically in real life.

You saying it carries authority means nothing to me. What's this "disagreeing with the truth" or "flag themselves as unwilling to admit the truth" bit. This sounds suspicious like the "truth according to you and your logic" and everyone else is unreasonable. Reading your last post is very reminiscent of arguments I get stuck with certain members of my family who are religious. If I don't agree with your premise to begin with chances are I am not going to agree with your logic structure or conclusion.

How did the discussion go on the other board prior to it being taken down? How did people like your approach? Did anyone there meet your standards for a logical argument.

See, for me a pure logic approach to an intuitive set of rules not written to cover ever situation that wasn't designed to be held up to this rigorous almost academic approach (as admitted by the designers) is irrational and irrelevent to begin with. That is what I mean about not agreeing with your premise. There are distinct cases where 2+2 =4 but in another area 4-2 doesn't equal 2. There are several instances where rules interact and produce equal priority and insolvable circular logic. In several cases word usage isn't as sharp as it should be or even consistant. What is the "truth" if I disagree with your definition of the word or am i "flagging myself as unwilling to admit the truth". On occasions two words with not quite similar meanings are used to describe the same effect but lead to disagreements where no-one is going to admit they are wrong. Pure logic approaches rarely work in the real world where there are ambiguities, inconsistancies and diametrically opposed results from similar situations in the subject matter. Also, bias and the fact that human beings have them means that often a "logical" approach is anything but.

Opposite sides think the other side is illogical, and who is the one to judge whether or not one side is right? Certainly not you or a group? Unless you are able to issue a FAQ that is official your/ group opinion counts for diddly squat if I or anyone else disagrees with it. This will just end up like any other rule discussion, two camps disagreeing with each other, and depending on how bad it goes someone will get banned.

Btw, "the truth is available for when they need it" sent shivers down my spine - memories of arguing with the JW's in my family.

Green Blow Fly wrote:These kind of arguments prove that you cannot go completely RAW or RAI. Rules lawyers will use both to gain the upper hand when playing. Only by working mutually together with your opponent can issues smoothly be resolved. It is the people who must win at all costs who ruin it for everyone.

- G

This is actually the approach I do take. I wonder how many others do as well. It seems the most simple and for me the most sensible as it makes for a more harmonious game. In fact, dare I say it, it comes back to this "social contract" Jervis witters on about on occasions when people complain about the crap rule writing. The "truth" is mutual agreement/ compromise regardless of logic and whether or not I think the person opposite is just plain wrong is how many of these discussions are solved. that mutual agreement may be a D6.

That's not the truth of the matter, that's a jerry-rig to keep the game moving. As I pointed out above, one could throw the rulebook out entirely and call whatever you played instead "Warhammer 40k" but that wouldn't be the Warhammer 40k rules stated by the rulebook.

Look, I understand that when it comes to disagreements about the rules during it's best to just agree on something and get on the with game. I'm not saying that people shouldn't do that. Indeed they should, although ideally the disagreements shouldn't even come up. When we're not in the middle of a game and we have the opportunity to avoid disagreements in future games such as a Rules discussion forum affords us, it would help things along to use an effective and objective methodology rather than the ineffective and subjective (and semantically invalid, just to hammer it home) pseudo-methods of RAI and RAW.

Nurglitch, could you do a sample breakdown of a section of the rules or frequently asked question? The YakFAQ has already compiled a large number of questions. Could you show us how to break down the rules to answer a couple of them?

Mannahnin, earlier I did ask for a rule that I could use as an example. I've just had a glance at the YakFAQ and it occurred to me that it would probably be better to address a rule that isn't a problem-case, in order to demonstrate how this method works.

Can you think of a piece of text in the rulebook that isn't a bone of contention with anyone? If not I figured I'd use the rapid fire weapon rules as an example since it's been raised.

Something that's not a bone of contention? How about the basic rules for how Rapid Fire works?

This is very tangential, and longish too the more I look at it. In fact, this is almost a sort of parralel thought to Nurglitch's thread, and I have to apologize in advance for failing to stick to topic. I also apologize for the disjointed nature and erratic spelling and grammar of this post - I've sort of a series of brain farts all erupting at once.

Nurglitch's second-to-last post (in relation to this one) is precisely what my group is doing - completely jettisoning the paper component of the products we purchased. It's a rather simple little excercise - GW makes some of the best, if not the best, 28mm science fiction miniatures on the market, alongside some of the most poorly written rules on the market.

Taking a step back from it it is sort of cool that a product marketed at preadolescent boys can attract this sort of wattage - in particular, the poorest and least valuable portion of the product. I'm personally going to have to go back over this to really understand what he's getting at - this time with a window to dictionary.com open. At the moment, I have more interest in cutting small pieces of flesh from my groin than in ever touching the 40k rulebook for gaming purposes, but it doesn't stop me from appreciating the value of these sorts of discussions on the sidelines, as it is intimately related to the hobby I continue to have.

The games played by the smallest of children procede under sets of rules that seem to be mutually understood by each child - it's a little sad how this kind of mentality breaks down right before puberty. H. G. Wells, in his book "Little Wars", now in the public domain and probably floating around on the internet somewhere, talked about the neccessity of participants to be imbued with a "spirit of play." In a historical game the spirit of play is acheived by a certain level of genuine amateur interest on behalf on the participants in recreating actual or potential events in miniature. In a fantasy game (fantasy and science fiction being essentially interchangeable in the popular context) the spirit of play can happen only through the serendipitous intersection of player's ideas of how exactly a rocket ship or a ray gun would work. Since there is no such thing as a rocket ship or a ray gun, this can be a little difficult at times.

Outside of large-scale competitive or semi-competitive play there is no "practical" need for any standardization of rules whatsoever, and now that we are no longer in the 1980s when large-scale corporate distribution was the only way to acheive this, any organizer who wants to speed the learning of their particular game can post their rules, often without fee, on the internet. Bound wargaming rule books are buggy whips; and for-profit wargames rules companies, or the wargames rules departments of large "hobby" companies, are dinosaurs.

The very best thing GW with its current marketting and distro set up could do would be to completely abandon trying to write anything besides fluff. Role-players will often purchase numerous sourcebooks for no purpose other than as toilet reading. There is a real market for pure sourcebooks, because there is a real market for fiction, and especially for science fiction. Book sellers have not been driven out of business by the dawn of the information age and we're consuming more paper than ever before. Gamers can always supply their own rules. Capitalism is a democracy and the only reason they keep making POOR rulebooks, POOR codexes, POOR erratta, and POOR FAQs is because WE KEEP BUYING THEM. We're the customers. We should say how it goes. They have only what power over our free time that we give them. And if we put a few incompetents out of work sending this message, GOOD RIDDANCE.

Mannahnin: Sounds good. Let's start with that. There's five stages to this analysis, as it were:

1. Find contextual information. This includes formatting, layout, and references.

2. Grammatical Analysis. This includes identifying the grammatical construction of the text in question. This step interacts somewhat with the formatting and layout mentioned in the first stage.

3. Term Analysis. This includes identifying the terms that are being used. Here's where we deal with amphiboly, homonyns, and the like. Note that some terms will be reiterated from text whose scope encapsulates the matter at hand, and some terms will be found in the formatting and layout rather than the text they inform.

4. Syntactic Analysis. Having laid out the terms and grammatical information arranging them into sentences, paragraphs, sections, etc, we take those terms referring to quantities, properties (aka qualities), objects, and logical operators and put them back together.

5. Semantic Analysis. Here we create a model of what specific object and property terms denote or refer to. Some terms will label parts of the text, some terms will label parts of the rules, and some terms will label the stuff that relates them.

So, page 29 of the rulebook ("Ignorance is Bliss").

Stage 1.
The language is English (British). The rule in question is "Rapid Fire Weapons" under the heading of "Weapon Types" and that under "Weapons". The specific text will be the second two paragraphs.

References include: (1) The Shooting Phase, (2) The Assault Phase, (3) Models, (4) Targets, (5) Movement, (6) Maximum Range, (7) Firing weapons.
Key terms include: "infantry model", "armed", "shoot", "fire", "carrying", "targets", "rapid fire weapons", "wish to charge", "close combat", "Assault phase", "Shooting phase"

Stage 2.
First Paragraph. Single Sentence:
C1: "An infantry model armed with a rapid fire weapon" this clause contains its own subject "An infantry model", a transitive verb "armed", direct object "with a rapid fire weapon".
C2: "can shoot twice" where the verb "shoot" modified by intransitive verb "can" and adverb "twice"
C3: "at targets up to 12" away" the object of the preposition "at" is "targets" with the objection of the propositions "up to" is "12"" modified by the adjective "away"

Second Paragraph. First Sentence (C# indicates clauses):
C1 Subject: "an infantry model" a compounded noun
C1 Verb: "If... has not moved," a 3rd person singular present indicative verb "has" an adverb "not" an intransitive verb "moved"
C2 Subject: "it" pronoun
C2 Verb: "may instead fire once" with an auxiliary verb "may" in a verb phrase with a verb "fire" modified by the adverbs "once" and "instead"
C2 Object: "at targets over 12" away," the object of the preposition "at" is "targets" with object of the preposition "over" is "12"" modified by the adjective "away"
C3 Subject: "up to its maximum range" with the noun "range" modified by the adjective "maximum" the object of the preposition "up to" and the attributive adjective "its"

Second Paragraph. Second Sentence (C# indicates clauses)
C1: "Models carrying rapid fire weapons" the noun "Models" is the subject, the verb "carrying" is used with the object, which is the compounded noun "rapid fire weapons"
C2: "that wish to charge into close combat in the Assault phase"
C2 Subject: the pronoun "that" i
C2 Verb: "wish to charge" is a verb phrase used with the object
C3 Object: "combat" is a noun modified by the adjective "close" and linked to the definite compounded noun "the Assault phase" by the preposition "in"
C3: "may not fire in the Shooting phase"
C3 Verb: the auxiliary verb "may" and the adverb "not" combine in a verb phrase with the verb "fire"
C3 Object: the definite compounded noun "the Shooting phase" is linked to the verb phrase by the preposition "in"

Right, I have the first two steps up. Notice that they are complementary, the list of terms and references reflecting the subjects, verbs, and objects of the sentences in question.

If anyone finds any mistakes, please speak up so I can correct it. I've made one deliberate one just so people can (and no doubt a few others just to embarrass me!).

You missed my point Nurglitch. Warhammer 40k does not exist outside out the creator's and players etc. perception of it. A bolter is not something that exists outside of the abrstract notion of itself. No amount of logic is going to determine whether a Bolter should be Str4 or 5. Those who write the rules say "Str4!" and thus it is. So if they write "A bolter is Str4" on page 6, and "A bolter is Str5" on page 7, both are equally valid, assuming the same text etc.

That is the issue I am getting at. The rules of a game system like 40k do not HAVE to be internally consistent. They should, but there is no necessity that they do. Thus, no amount of analysis will really get you to the "correct" answer, unless that answer is "damn, it doesn't work, better patch it." It's just the nature of human created theoretical systems that we think they work the way we think they ought to work, so we "fix" inconsistencies to make them work. (By "fix" I mean patch gaps, ignore problems, drink until we forget what they are, etc.)

I didn't miss your point, Wehrkind, I pointed out that the idea that warhammer 40k has some sort of existence limited to the imagination of the players and its creators is false. I'd love to argue this with you (as I am genuinely interested in why you believe both you and I should hold this position about "theoretical systems"), but this is neither the time nor the place. I'll only say that I'm not concerned with people's subjective perceptions, only with the objective matter of the text.

And, as I pointed out, the analysis that we're (I'm) engaging in does not require its object of scrutiny to be consistent, even to identify typos, misprints, and errors. This is simply a fact. Feel free to take up your misgivings with better logicians than I, or to lay out a conclusive argument proving otherwise.

If you're just going to object based on your opinion rather than the facts of formal semantics, and disagree with those facts as well, then at best you're simply inconveniencing vital electrons, and at worst you're misleading people about what I'm doing here and how it works. If you're not interested in participating, don't.

At the risk of incurring all the worst epithets that the Internet has (condescending, arrogant, etc) I'd suggest you go and maybe study the subject a bit. For if you have, then surely you would know better than to merely assert objections without attendant proofs.